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When it comes toColombian coffee beans, the delicate berry-like sweet acidity, the aroma of roasted nuts, and the caramel-like finish make the balanced coffee flavor irresistible to many beginners just getting into pour-over coffee, who can't help but exclaim: This is so delicious!! It's not too sour and not too bitter, love it love it~!

The main reason Colombia can become the world's second-largest Arabica coffee bean producer is that there are active volcanoes within and around Colombia. The volcanic ash produced after eruptions spreads over the soil, providing abundant minerals. Such fertile volcanic soil, combined with high altitude and microclimates, gives the coffee beans grown here the characteristics of soft acidity and a solid, full-bodied mouthfeel.

In recent years, coffee competitions have increased farmers' incomes, allowing Colombian coffee to shed its old impression of being usable only as a base bean. Before this, everyone used it as commercial coffee beans or espresso blend coffee beans, and only a very small number of coffee beans were of high enough quality to meet the requirements of becoming single-origin specialty coffee. With improvements in cultivation techniques, the quality of Colombian coffee beans today has made tremendous progress, and it is now basically hard to encounter particularly poor-quality coffee beans.

Colombian coffee beansgrading system is based on the size of green coffee beans, and special green bean screens are used for sieving and sorting (unit of size: mesh).Colombian coffee beansare divided into 3 grades, with different mesh numbers corresponding to different grades.

Grade Supreme: size standard is 95 mesh

Grade EP: size standard is 15 mesh (a coffee bean grade customized for the European market)

Grade U.G.Q: size standard is 14 mesh

(There are also some grade branches: 95 mesh size may be called Supreme Premium, and 95 mesh may be called Extra)

At this point, some friends may ask, doesn't Front Street also have Excelso? Here Front Street must make a correction~ Excelso does not represent any Colombian green coffee bean grading system, and does not belong to the classification levels of Colombian green coffee beans~ In fact, Excelso is the optimal grade for Colombian green bean exports. Regardless of which green bean mesh size grade it is, as long as the green beans are exported, they belong to the Excelso grade. That is to say, Supreme Screen 18+, Supreme, EP, and U.G.Q all belong to the Excelso grade.

This is also why Colombian green bean burlap sacks are all marked with Excelso. In order to strictly control the quality of every exported coffee bean, the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation issued a new decree in 2016: only exported green beans that meet Excelso standards will have the "EXCELSO - Café de Colombia" (Colombian Excelso grade coffee) mark printed on the packaging and will receive a Quality Certificate issued by the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC).

Most Colombian coffee farmers use the most traditional washed processing method to strip the coffee fruit pulp from the bean. The washed processing method includes a soaking and fermentation step in a water tank. This step mainly decomposes the mucilage of the coffee fruit through fermentation, while also allowing the coffee beans themselves to produce more acidity. Finally, through a short drying period, the flavor presentation of washed Colombian coffee beans is cleaner and fresher.

Therefore, when Front Street recommendsColombian coffee beansto beginners, it always first recommends washed coffee beans from the Huila region, priced at 29 yuan/100g, so everyone can try different producing regions for the first time at an affordable cost. You can place orders at the Front Street Tmall flagship store or Front Street Taobao store.

When brewing washed Colombian coffee beans, in order to highlight the coffee beans' own soft acidity and caramel sweetness, Front Street mostly uses a V60 01 filter cup to enhance the coffee's layering. Prepare 15g of coffee beans and grind to a medium-fine degree (caster sugar size; 75% passing through China standard No. 20 sieve), then use 90°C water at a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio for brewing, with the process divided into 3 pours.

Pouring demonstration: bloom with 30g water for 30 seconds, then pour in a slow circular stream until 125g and pause, then when the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring until 225g and stop pouring. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, remove the filter cup. (Timing starts at the beginning of blooming.) Total extraction time is 1'59".

Flavor profile of Colombian Huila washed coffee beans: berries, nuts, caramel, chocolate

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.